USN-1587-1: libxml2 vulnerability

Ubuntu Security Notice USN-1587-1

libxml2 vulnerability

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its
derivatives:

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

Ubuntu 11.10

Ubuntu 11.04

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Summary

Applications using libxml2 could be made to crash or run programs as your
login if they opened a specially crafted file.

Software description

libxml2
- GNOME XML library

Details

Juri Aedla discovered that libxml2 incorrectly handled certain memoryoperations. If a user or application linked against libxml2 were trickedinto opening a specially crafted XML file, an attacker could cause theapplication to crash or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privilegesof the user invoking the program.

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following
package version: